ruby on rails recursive sub-string

Question

I have the string (actually it's a date and time) like this "20120207080000".

Is there any option to split the given string using any pattern matching technique or anything else?

i.e I need the output like this

output = ["2012", "02", "07", "08", "00", "00"]

Otherwise is it possible to convert the given string into date/time object?.

ruby version: 1.8.7

Answer 1

"20120207080000".unpack('A4A2A2A2A2A2') #=> ["2012", "02", "07", "08", "00", "00"]

Answer 2

Get a DateTime object like this:

require 'date'
DateTime.strptime('20120207080000', '%Y%m%d%H%M%S')

Please take care that you are using the right order of elements. I was just guessing.